Congressman Bruce Barton. Library of CongressA year and a half ago, VTDigger.org made a pitch to J-Lab, a journalism center at the School of Communication at American University, for what then seemed like a pipe dream: the creation of a virtual, public newsroom. Our idea was to design a newsgathering platform with the functionality of a social networking site like Facebook. We wanted to give readers and reporters a place to work together. Reporters would let readers know what they’re working on and ask readers for story suggestions and tips. Readers would have a forum to discuss news topics with each other and to interact with reporters.
Thanks to generous funding from J-Lab, we have built that platform. On Tipster, readers can follow Vermont reporters, suggest news tips, participate in news groups, and post news events, documents, photos and links.
We hope you’ll join the conversation and become a member of our Tipster news community.
